Billy Corgan didn't need to break up Smashing Pumpkins to be free to indulge himself. The band's final album, self-consciously arcane and melodramatic, is proof of that. Hence Zwan, a supergroup of sorts, in which Corgan appears to be having fun. Which must be a relief after years of public spats with former belle Courtney Love, intra-band wrangling, drug problems and being in the shadow of Nirvana.

Zwan's debut album is an efficient exercise in the kind of American alt.rock with big choruses that makes the boys at the front jump up and down; it bears a passing similarity to prime, pre-goth Pumpkins. Not that you would guess it from the opening minutes of this unusually intimate show. During Jesus, Corgan plays a florid guitar solo of such terrifying longueurs that it seems likely to string out the track for the duration of the gig - an amusing, if numbing, conceit.

Fiddling interminably with his instrument, Corgan is a nerdy, awkward frontman. Still, the boys at the front (and, yes, the majority are boys) hang on every squawk of his tremolo. Luckily, the disconcertingly perky Endless Summer (complete with incongruous "la la las" from Corgan) lets a little light in.

There is a great deal of rock, accompanied by a great deal of rock posturing. Corgan and chief Zwan co-conspirator Matt Sweeney are clearly having a ball, bassist Paz Lenchantin flirts sweetly with Corgan, and powerhouse Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain responds demurely to the chant of "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy" from his personal fan club. Oddly, second guitarist Dave Pajo, the one musician here with a masterpiece under his belt (Slint's Spiderland), appears uninvolved. Perhaps he's just shy.

For all the sound and fury, many of the songs lack muscle. And Corgan's voice - which, however he emotes, has a nasal default setting that implies boredom - remains a weedy, unappealing instrument. Still, it is hard to begrudge someone with Corgan's fraught history the chance to let off steam. As the mnemonic used to teach basic music notation has it: Every Good Boy Deserves Fun.